Exploring your life on the page is daunting whether you are writing short memoir (the personal essay) or a book-length manuscript. Where does one start? How does one choose the highlights for the story’s exploration? How does one find surprises? Here are 20 ideas to find a point of entry and to organize your memoir or personal essay toward discovery and vivid evocation.

1. List the places where you have lived. Make a note of significant events and/or learning that happened in each place. Write an outline of chapters named for each event or learning. When you write a personal essay or memoir organized from these chapters, be sure to provide lots of setting with details of place and time. You do not have to go in chronological order—you can choose a geographical trajectory or an alphabetical approach.
2. List significant people in your life: relatives, nemeses, teachers, bosses, neighbors, lovers, friends, religious leaders, shopkeepers. Organize the names under two columns: positive and negative. Outline a memoir whose chapters alternate between one positive relationship and one negative relationship. Try to make it turn out that the last chapter is positive. When you write a memoir organized this way, the meetings with the people do not have to be chronological. They can be associative—like figures who turned out differently (two teachers for instance) —or people you met in the same circumstance.
3. List objects that you have kept with you for years. Outline a memoir for which each chapter is named for one of the objects. When you write the chapters, tell the story of the object and how it came to be in your possession.
4. List jobs you have held. Outline a memoir in which each chapter starts with a job you had. Perhaps one job had many functions—in which case your memoir might be called by the name of the job and the chapters would be named by the functions. When you write the chapters, be sure to show yourself performing the function. Use details and words that are particular to the line of work.
5. Think about a lifelong hobby or interest. Name aspects of this hobby, using jargon from the field. Outline a memoir in which is chapter is named with a word that is jargon in that field. When you write, discuss how you encountered that aspect of the field and what you do with the knowledge you have.
6. Think about the

   ways you have influenced others. Outline a memoir called “Lessons” for which each chapter is about a result of your influence. Or do the reverse—make the lessons the ones you learned from particular others.

7. Start a book with a moment of new direction. Where are you? Who else is there? What are you saying to each other? What else is going on in the room? How did things come to a head or create the opening for a new direction? Write the story that leads up to action you have taken.
8. List books and films that made a big impact on you. Write out memorable scenes—without checking the book or the film. Check one or more of the books or films. Is your memory correct or incorrect? Write about what it means to you to find this out after all these years.
9. What would you have wanted to become but never did—a doctor instead of a lawyer, a career woman instead of a mom, the partner of someone who got away or who you let go? Write the imagined story of the unlived life. Compare it to the life you live now.
10. Write down vivid dreams you remember. Outline a memoir whose chapters are titled by an image from each dream. When you write the content to this memoir, free associate from the dream to parts of your life.
11. Write about a significant loss of a person, a job, a specific aspect of your health. Describe how it occurred. What has come to fill the space the loss created?
12. Write about a significant gain. Describe how it occurred. What did you have to let go to make room for the gain?
13. Think of a game you know well. Write down the rules. Organize a memoir about your life with chapters that are titled for these rules.
14. Identify a poem or poems that you admire. Excerpt lines that really resonant with you. Outline a memoir whose chapter titles are lines from the poems. Write each chapter by talking about the meaning of the particular line in your life.
15. Write down harsh words you remember others saying. Write an outline for a memoir called something like, “Harsh Words Shape Lives” by naming the chapters after each of these words. Write each chapter by recounting the story behind the words.
16. List 10 items from your childhood house that you no longer have. Outline a memoir by entitling chapters with the names of those lost objects. When you write the chapters, describe the objects and their role in your thoughts and feelings. You might call this memoir something like, “The Things I Left Behind.”
17. Write up your life as it might appear in a synopsis on a book flap or back cover. This provides a tool for you as you fill out the story.
18. Imagine aspects of your life told in comic book or “graphic novel” form. Describe the scenes that the cartoonist would create and the dialog for the character’s boxes. Choose a selection of scenes from work, home, school, vacations, exercise classes, and evenings out among other experiences.
19. Imagine you are putting together and giving a workshop on living the life you have led—as a teacher, a salesperson, doctor, lawyer, parent, caregiver, farmer, landscape designer, nanny, house cleaner, carpenter, pizza delivery person. In the course of a day or weekend intensive, what would your attendees be taught in seminars and in what order? List them. When you write this memoir, the chapters will be composed of each of the seminars you create.
20. Choose a color that has significance for you. List events and memories in which that color is represented. When you write this memoir, title it with the name of the color. Write each chapter by starting with a scene in which you remember something of that color.